I'm playing around with an IP to location feature for the forum. Now when you click on a name you can see in brackets the country (based on the last post IP). Sometimes however the country is missing, and sometimes the PHP5 script returns an error. I'm using this API and binary file: http://www.maxmind.com/app/geoip_country I previously tried this but it returns empty recordsets on IPs I tried with: http://ip-to-country.webhosting.info/ I'd like to know if it shows right for your name. Also, if anyone knows of other good IP2location services...

Harvesrt on blogspher High volume txt stream ?Relevancy vs noise pocCrawler for blogspot.comPast 1 year - link farm How are you get relevnace and co-relation ?Stemmed index into the serpPopularity curves ? And corelation based serp. On keywordsMesh of google trends and link farmingStock prices ??

In Windows Vista, the included browser will not be IE7, but IE7+. This version of IE will include Windows Vista-only features like Protected Mode, Parental Controls, and improved Network Diagnostics. The features take advantage of the big changes in Microsoft's next OS, and couldn't really be brought to downlevel versions. Strangely enough, the commenters on the blog entry regarding IE7+ are arguing about the name instead of discussing the features. What's wrong with "IE7+"? I don't get it...

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Status was sancationed on Philipp's area. It was a deleted. Unfortunatly, I dont have Travis Harris email to ask him what he means when its "niffty". Does he mean that I step down or am I just an aggressive poster ??

After all, do they know that for Google, Philipp area is where I play. Not sure if those guys actually read my blog or not :)-

okay.... I know I'm a looser.... but my guess is that most of us Blogoscoped forum members are. But I was playing the how many clicks away from Google game and I saw /pd's post count. thought it was "nifty" http://trex005.googlepages.com/1234posts.png

Edelman today acquiredA&R Partners. This is one of the largest and most successful PR firms in Silicon Valley. It has 115 people and revenues of $15 million. Edelman's Silicon Valley team will be integrated with A&R

As a combined entity we are now the largest technology PR firm in Silicon Valley and one of the largest in the U.S. A&R represents huge tech brands, including Adobe, Palm, Citrix, and Mozilla. (Hey Rafael Ebron - we work together now, buddy!)

This is a really exciting time to be on board with Edelman. When you look at all of our recent moves - me2revolution, Technorati, A&R, etc. - it's clear that we're excited about technology. We're using it to drive conversation and to innovate, but at the same time we're serving as a critical partner to the players in tech industry.

I am really looking forward to meeting the A&R team and their clients. Many of these companies are already blogging so I will be really interested to hear about their experiences and what we can learn from them. Welcome A&R!

Monday, May 22, 2006

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heheheh.. I agree Meg. As a kid i once bite my puppy on the snort and now I get bitten on my nose too :)-

Cute Overload At Cute Overload™, we scour the Web for only the finest in Cute Imagery. Imagery that is Worth Your Internet Browsing Time. We offer an overwhelming amount of cuteness to fill your daily visual allowance. Drink it in!

It’s a holiday weekend here in Canada. While the coffee was making I started thinking about the whole FeedPass abuse theme I wondered about yesterday. And then it clicked how easy it would be to cut the author of a blog out of the revenue stream on FeedPass. Here’s what I did:

I used my Feedburner account to create a new feed for TechCrunch. Here’s the chicklet:

I used Feedpass to wrap that feed in advertising. You can see it here:

Then, I used FeedBurner’s Title/Description Burner feature to insert the FeedPass claim code. FeedPass accepted the modified header as real, and allowed me to claim TechCrunch.

By doing this, I get the 1/3 of Google revenues that FeedPass reserves for the creator of the feed, PLUS the 1/3 that FeedPass reserves for the owner of the feed. Sorry Mike. I guess I cut you out of the loop…

Having had the time to think through this issue over night, I’ve come to the conclusion that there really isn’t a legitimate reason for FeedPass to offer this feature. Syndication of blog content should be done with the author’s consent, which I don’t believe would be unreasonably withheld in most cases. Certainly, I’ve allowed my content to be commercially syndicated by a variety of different groups. But commercial syndication of all my content (even just excerpts) without my consent crosses a line, in my mind.

Randy asked yesterday how this was different from Google, which of course, does exactly that — it commercially syndicates all of my content. It does so, however, with my consent. I could add a robots file, and they would honour that. Opting out of FeedPass requires me to send email to Jim Woolley. If FeedPass can automate claiming a blog, then they ought to also automate an opt-out. Moreover, they ought to do a better job of ensuring that only the owner of a blog can claim the feed.

And in the meantime, sorry Mike… I am keeping all of the click revenue from your excellent work for myself!!!

If you are into messing around with lasers, you should really check out Wicked Lasers latest product. The Spyder Series is the next generation of portable laser technology. Available in two colors, green up to 300mW, and blue up to 40mW,…

Since the Gear Live and Bleeding Edge crew has spent the past week in our travels to and from E3, this one seems more than appropriate. Boeing has released some shots of the interior of their new luxury aircraft, the Boeing 787. Looking at the images, this thing is a beauty…

The treaty, as it were, seems intended to buy the Administration some credibility with Congress on the US-India deal while going nowhere in the Conference on Disarmament—the most most transparently cynical proposal since Caligula made a Senator of his horse.

Think I am being unfair? Read Rademaker&#8217;s harrangue where he submits the draft treaty, takes a swipe at the CD and many of its members for “hostage taking,” and then prounces the text frat-boy cool with a demonstrative “it’s all here.” Oh, yeah.

I wonder … Is this how Rademaker proposed to Danielle Pletka?

Michael Krepon at the Stimson Center has attempted to point out the various flaws with more measure and grace than I can muster at the moment.

1) Ease of publishing. 2) Discoverability. (Pings weblogs.com or technorati or another ping server). 3) Conversationality. (Trackbacks or as-they-happen referer logs, or now being part of Technorati and other blog search engines). 4) Linkability. (All posts should have permalinks). 5) Syndicatability. (All content should be available in RSS feeds).

If you don't have those five, you shouldn't call your stuff a blog. Especially if I can't link to it from here.

I had never even heard of Washington Group International (WGI) until I started chatting with Jim McKeeth at the Boise Bloggers Dinner on Monday night. Jim, it quickly became clear, is WGI's internal blog evangelist and he asked me to drop by to talk about blogging with his boss Andy Snodgrass yesterday afternoon.

It turns out the WGI is among the world's leading engineering, construction and large, complex project management firms. I does business in 30 countries and 40 states. It is a conglomeration of large chunks of Westinghouse, Raytheon and Morrison Knudsen divisions and as the legacy of the people who built the Hoover Dam, TransAlaska Pipeline,the Mars Land Rover, chemial weapons destruction facilities, light railways and a good deal more.

The company's interest at this point is only for internal blogging, at least for now and they have two enormously suitable project for internal blogging and perhaps wikis:

(1) Passing generational wisdom--WGI is bracing itself for the retrement of a significant ercentage of its existing workforce. These guys are the "Old Joe's" who have been there, done that and have the wisdom and sagacity aggregated over a lifetime of trials, errors and successes. Andy talked to me about using an internal blog, to let this generaion tell their stories of what they saw and what they did along with how they did it. The blogs, and perhaps podcasts, would serve as a digital history for the company and for the next and future generatios of new employees. This is a wonderful idea. I have not previously thought of using a blog this way but it is so clearly an idea that is easier to implement than most of the complex engineering projects that is the company's core competency. Social media is simply a superior way to deliver storytelling and it lasts forever.

(2) Interdepartmental collaboration--Andy told me a story about the company having stored a pair of massive turbines for a particular project. When it came time to deploy them, the team discovered they had been corrupted by some sort of pitting. They called in a pair of outside "experts" who solved the project for a tidy fee. Several months later the company's CEO would discover that these experts had learned their trade from a book written by GI employees in another division. It is an enormous challenge for global companies to know what it's collective staff knows and we discussed how blogs and wikis could help the company effectively share knowledge.

Both of these projects involve the use of social media to prevent the need to continuously reinvent the wheel, a problem for a great many companies. I left impressed with their interest and enthusiasm.

For me, there was an additional lesson. I ave to admit that part of me is a start-up snob A key reason is that I just hate being bogged down by process. I said good night to Jim a about 10:30 Mnday night. By 10:30 yesterday morning, he had been able to set up a meeting with a corporate VP. This morning I asked Jim for permission to post this at 7:20 a.m. Andy gave me his blessing at 7:42. Now thats the kind of focus and execution that takes my breath away.

NOTE: This post has been reedited with a typo being removed and some irrelevent financial mentions being deleted.

It’s worth reading Andy Abramson’s thoughts on AIM Phoneline. Essentially, after a little thinking about it, Andy has realized something we all should have seen — AOL has the largest network of Dial-Up POPs in North America. While MSN moved aggressively into broadband (because they couldn’t beat AOL at dial-up) in the late 1990’s, AOL clung stubbornly to that core business. Today, they’ve got the PRI’s, they’ve got the modems, etc etc etc. Giving away phone numbers that ride on that network is an incremental cost of, what, 10 cents per month per subscriber?

While everyone else giving away phone numbers is forced to negotiate wacky deals with Native American tribal phone companies in the middle of sparsely populated areas like the Nevada desert, AOL can just wade in and start capturing customers. Can anyone doubt that AOL will be the new phone company of America? Is it not obvious that the Voice 2.0 mantra of applications driving value on the new network will be realized first by AOL?

I participated in a fireside chat with Stuart MacDonald at Mesh today. We covered a range of topics about blogs, social media, marketing and PR. Connie Crosby live blogged it as did Tris Hussey. Joseph Tonrley did too. A big hoo ha erupted about character blogs. I still maintain the same position on this I did a year ago...unless they're for kids.

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"Wow. Everyone involved in this clusterfuck did absolutely the wrong thing.

Mr. Baines threw a fellow designer under the bus. Arrington posted it to a public blog, in the process confusing thick-skinned with a total lack of social skills. Cunliffe, who had every right to resign at this point, botches the job by doing it over a blog. And now Arrington doesn't know when to shut the fuck up.

Over at TechCrunch land I see a lot of people are calling Mike Arrington a jerk for how he dealt with a designer. ValleyWag has the timeline.

A few thoughts.

1) This is why I do my own design. And I've been derided for that decision too. But, it's ugly. And it's mine. And I don't need to deal with anyone else's hurt feelings if someone calls my design wacky or ugly. 2) I immediately sent Mike Arrington an email when he emailed the design around to a group of his friends and said it sucked. Why? Cause it didn't work on my mobile phone. I hope he fixes that soon. Dave Winer's design is great for mobile phones, by the way. I know a lot of bloggers who read other people's blogs on mobile phones (at Northern Voice almost half the bloggers there said that they read blogs on phones at least occassionally). 3) I really hate the way people deal with each other on blog comments. Going ad hominem just sucks. It's far stronger just to argue ideas and not get personal. But, that's just me. 4) Over on CrunchNotes I sense a lot of jealousy for the position Mike now holds. (He's #1 on the Share your OPML site, for instance). The thing is, I've seen how hard Mike works to get his blog out there and done. Hey, Mike, I know how hard you work on your blog and I really appreciate it. While in the hospital I've been looking for a blog that comes close to watching the Silicon Valley geek industry and I haven't found one that comes close.

Anyway, it sucks having dirty laundry waving in the wind for everyone to see, but it's part of blogging. Not fun part, for sure, but I'll gladly trade places with anyone having a bit of blogging trouble this week.

Sidebar: just throw it away and redo. Don't be afraiid to abadon it. Do not plan for more then a week at a time.Don't build half baked product, rather a product that is half built.Sent via BlackBerry on the Bell Mobility network

The fire alarm goes of at the meschon06- and the secuity person. Sez something stupid like-" the alarm ha s gone of the c level - the porlem is being investigated- please standy for further instructions "

WASHINGTON (AP) - Citing Microsoft Corp.'s lapses under part of a landmark antitrust settlement, the Justice Department said Friday it wants to extend by two years its oversight of some of the company's business practices until at least November 2009.

Microsoft has already agreed to the lengthier scrutiny by the department and 17 states under a proposal that still must be approved by a U.S. judge. The company has struggled with a key provision in the 2002 antitrust settlement requiring it to disclose to its competitors sensitive details about some of its software.

Government lawyers said they were prepared to extend oversight of Microsoft's business activities through 2012 if they deem it necessary. In court papers filed Friday, they described Microsoft's efforts under parts of the settlement as "disappointing" and "not very encouraging," but they also said Microsoft's failures were neither willful nor systematic.

If the longer term is eventually approved by the judge, the U.S. court battle against Microsoft would stretch to at least 11 years - the age of a middle-schooler - before it concludes.

During that period, Microsoft will have sold at least five generations of its flagship Windows software. At the same time, Google Inc. has emerged as one of Microsoft's biggest rivals, iPods and BlackBerries have revolutionized portable gadgets and technology executives have made and lost billions.

Lawyers said there was little chance U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly would reject the proposed extension because she has expressed concerns in recent years about Microsoft complying with that part of the settlement, which she has described as among its most important requirements.

Microsoft's top lawyer, Brad Smith, said the extension was "an important step" and gives the company time to finish technical documents that describe the inner workings its software.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Citing Microsoft Corp.'s lapses under part of a landmark antitrust settlement, the Justice Department said Friday it wants to extend by two years its oversight of some of the company's business practices until at least November 2009.

Microsoft has already agreed to the lengthier scrutiny by the department and 17 states under a proposal that still must be approved by a U.S. judge. The company has struggled with a key provision in the 2002 antitrust settlement requiring it to disclose to its competitors sensitive details about some of its software.

Government lawyers said they were prepared to extend oversight of Microsoft's business activities through 2012 if they deem it necessary. In court papers filed Friday, they described Microsoft's efforts under parts of the settlement as "disappointing" and "not very encouraging," but they also said Microsoft's failures were neither willful nor systematic.

If the longer term is eventually approved by the judge, the U.S. court battle against Microsoft would stretch to at least 11 years - the age of a middle-schooler - before it concludes.

During that period, Microsoft will have sold at least five generations of its flagship Windows software. At the same time, Google Inc. has emerged as one of Microsoft's biggest rivals, iPods and BlackBerries have revolutionized portable gadgets and technology executives have made and lost billions.

Lawyers said there was little chance U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly would reject the proposed extension because she has expressed concerns in recent years about Microsoft complying with that part of the settlement, which she has described as among its most important requirements.

Microsoft's top lawyer, Brad Smith, said the extension was "an important step" and gives the company time to finish technical documents that describe the inner workings its software.

Mark Evans from the National Post is grilling Om Malik on the future of media at Mesh Conference here in Toronto. Om is a reporter with Business 2.0 and one of the most influential bloggers in the world. Here are some of the highlights from his talk at Mesh. Stowe Boyd, who's sitting/blogging next to me, has more rich notes (or will soon) on his blog.

Mark: Can the old media world can survive? Om: "There's an old way for delivering information and a new way... Globally there's no way you can replace a Washington Post or New York Times."

Mark: "How are newspapers going to be able to embrace blogs and podcasts?" Om: "There's a whole new generation of readers who only consume their news online. Figuring out the business plan that will all be relative." Om cites Forbes.com as exemplary because they put more resources towards the web. "I'd be glad to see a lot of newspapers go away... Blogs are killing off the trade press."

Mark: How does someone establish credibility as a blogger?Om: " Credibility comes from the content you create. People recognized what's good and what's bad. Getting discovered is another matter."

Audience: How do we deal with the fact that online you can tune out all the ads using Firefox? Om: "Two words - Internet Explorer, 85% market share. That audience has not figured out how to block ads."

The occasionally irascible but always entertaining billionaire sports-team owner and media gadfly Mark Cuban (hey, that would look good on a business card, wouldn’t it?) has a great post today about blogs and the traditional media. His first point: “A blog is media.” Simple, and yet many people miss that one completely, or go around talking about “the blogosphere” as though it’s a single giant entity, which drives many (including Jeff Jarvis) crazy. Say it with me, everyone: the blogosphere is “made of people,” just like the stuff in that great old campy horror movie Soylent Green.

In his post, Mark notes that:

“In traditional media, you are first defined by your medium. There is some constraint to the physical or digital definition of the medium the content is delivered on or by, that for the most part determines how you are perceived. There is a cost vs time vs interest vs access series of constraints that determines who your audience is, how you reach them and what they expect of you.”

In other words, newspaper comes to the door in the morning and is read (or not) at the table or on the bus, radio happens now and then in cars or during dinner, TV is on in the morning and after dinner but rarely during the day, and so on. Newspapers have to print stuff on rolled-out sections of dead trees and then load it onto trucks, radio has to beam stuff from tower to tower, TV has to pay anchors obscene sums of money for hairspray and plastic surgery, etc. etc.

The other big point, however, as Mark puts it, is:

“In a nutshell, blogging is personal. Which is really where the paths of blogging and traditonal media diverge. Traditional media has become almost exclusively corporate while blogging remains almost exclusively personal… Sure, there are bloggers that want to make money from their blogs [but] they are the infinitesimal minority. 99pct of blogs are about what someone has to say. 99 pct of traditional media is about making money.”

In typical Cuban-esque fashion, I think that hits the traditional metal fastening device right on the head. Blogs are personal, traditional media is corporate. Are there columnists and stories and people within the regular media who achieve some personal connection to readers or listeners? Of course there are — all the way from Howard Stern to your favourite columnist at the local paper. But it’s harder. Blogs make that a whole lot easier, and therein lies their power.

One interesting subtext to all this, of course, is that the personal power of his blog has gotten Mark Cuban into trouble before — including just yesterday.

Update: Jeff Jarvis has taken issue with some of what Mark said in a post at Buzzmachine, and Mark has responded in the comments. And Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 has an interesting take on Mark’s post, about the differences between “vocational” and “avocational” media. Interestingly enough, Mark has also followed up his post with another one on what newspapers do better than the Internet.